Surely its time to scrap the Euro and bring back the Punt?

[sandar]

lolw interest rates fuelled the property boom certainly....but if the economy was directed correctly the low rates would have been taken advantage of by small businesses and the money not put into property that was achieveable but not by the government of all the idiots

[nuj]

sorry its too late we should never have joined the euro in the first place considering our main trading partners the u.k. and the u.s. have their own individual currencies and i feel the building boom wouldnt have reached the heights it did thus we wouldnt have had as far to fall and surely we would be on the road to recovery instead of staring into an even bigger debt hole and a visit by the IMF. If only we had a government who had the foresight to control the building boom. But alas we had failure fail! on the plus side it makes holidays easier Afraid we are stuck with the euro and memories of the punt!

UK? US? Stupidly low interest rates, especially in the US, leading to the two biggest property busts in the G7.

How come, within the eurozone, only Spain had a property boom/bubble to rival Ireland's? Interest rates were and are the same across the eurozone, after all. Equally, how come the Spanish banking system has remained not only solvent, but relatively unscathed?

Whatever monetary grouping we chose, it's hard to believe government policies, national behaviour or the quality of regulation would have been different. Easy money was a worldwide phenomenon, stemming in the main from the US.

[sandar]

therea re other factors than interest rates which affect it. In spaion lax regulastion int he area of planning and stuipidluy highd emand for holiday homes and hiotels fuelled there boom.

[Cassandra Syndrome]

With the UK coming out of recession by the ability to print its own money,
its now time for Ireland to ditch th Euro and bing back the Punt and our ability to change our own interest rates?


Not being in the Euro has not harmed the UK, so I see no reason as to why it would harm us.

It would surely be wise to follow the British example and print our own money?

Fully agree on bringing back the Punt. We need our own currency. We are an island economy. We could peg it with gold and have it reasonably weak to export our way out of this **ite.

On saying that who do we export to? Plus it would have to be gradual as we don't want to spook internetional investors.

Having no monetary policy for 10 years has crippled us. Its probably all too late. We will not survive the next financial tsunami or a 40% exposure wave of Swine Flu.

By the way, Quantitative Easing is crazy voodoo economics which risks hyperinflation, so England is not a model we should be aiming for. They are not coming out of recession either.

[droghedasouth]

Fully agree on bringing back the Punt. We need our own currency. We are an island economy. We could peg it with gold and have it reasonably weak to export our way out of this **ite.

On saying that who do we export to? Plus it would have to be gradual as we don't want to spook internetional investors.

Having no monetary policy for 10 years has crippled us. Its probably all too late. We will not survive the next financial tsunami or a 40% exposure wave of Swine Flu.

By the way, Quantitative Easing is crazy voodoo economics which risks hyperinflation, so England is not a model we should be aiming for. They are not coming out of recession either.

Ireland - the only country in the world on the gold standard.
We need to get those leprauchans working, mining gold at the ends of rainbows.

[ivnryn]

Fully agree on bringing back the Punt. We need our own currency. We are an island economy. We could peg it with gold and have it reasonably weak to export our way out of this **ite.

A gold standard based currency is actually a pretty strong (or at least stable) currency. If we had a gold backed currency, the value of the Punt would have increased against the dollar by the same amount that gold has.

Also, "weak" and "strong" relates to change in the value of the currency. If the value of the currency has just dropped, then it is weak. A currency cannot be permenently weak, as then people's wages will agjust upwards.

[droghedasouth]

A gold standard based currency is actually a pretty strong (or at least stable) currency. If we had a gold backed currency, the value of the Punt would have increased against the dollar by the same amount that gold has.

Also, "weak" and "strong" relates to change in the value of the currency. If the value of the currency has just dropped, then it is weak. A currency cannot be permenently weak, as then people's wages will agjust upwards.

Even if there were any merit in this piece of lunacy, you need enough gold reserves for the policy to be credible.
We haven't enough.

As for stability, look at the volatility of the price of gold.

[reknaw]

Why don't we skip the punt and just go all the way back to cowrie shells? In fact, they remind me of what I think of whenever our politicians are mentioned. Clue: it's got four letters and starts with a "c":